Investigation Follows Preliminary Review of Alleged Unfair Trade Practices Harming U.S. Manufacturers
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) strongly supports last week’s launch of official investigations by the Department of Commerce into alleged dumping and illegal subsidies on solar modules. This follows formal petitions filed last month by The Alliance for American Solar Manufacturing and Trade, in response to market manipulation driven by predominantly Chinese-owned manufacturing companies operating in Indonesia, and Laos, as well as those headquartered in India.
The recently passed reconciliation package – or the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ – regrettably failed to include policies that would have helped ensure American solar deployment was Made-in-America, and not by Chinese-owned companies. To defend against subsidized and unfairly-traded imports from all other countries, U.S. solar manufacturers must take on the burden of litigating against unfair imports, or be destroyed in the process. Trade remedies have been put in place to go after panels and parts made-in-China – with new imports coming from Indonesia and Laos belonging to Chinese-owned companies. Beyond China, the investigation will likely find that other countries are also subsidizing more capacity than their domestic market can absorb, meaning those products will be exported to the U.S., undercutting our own local solar manufacturers.
“China does not play by global trade rules, as they illegally use Chinese-headquartered companies in Laos and Indonesia to continue flooding the global market with subsidized, forced-labor-linked solar products to undercut our workers, set artificially lower prices, and to drive out American competition,” said Jon Toomey, President of CPA. “India, too, has set its sights on export dominance of solar and other industries. Today we’re proud to see these American solar manufacturers receive the formal backing that they deserve with the imposition of these investigations at Commerce.”
Meanwhile, the solar industry is undergoing a major resurgence. New plants are set to open in the U.S., with companies investing heavily to build a domestic, solar supply chain capable of meeting local demand. Floods of imports from Asia erode corporate investor confidence at home.
CPA warned in a February 2024 report titled “The Coming Solar Apocalypse” that domestic solar was being threatened by global overcapacity, which leads to much lower prices for solar panels that make it hard for U.S. based companies to break even and justify investment in the sector.
Companies in Southeast Asia, most of them Chinese multinationals, have been hit with numerous anti-dumping and countervailing duty charges over the years. CPA supports industrial policies designed to counter global solar overcapacity and predatory practices. CPA believes it is imperative for U.S.-based companies to make more of the goods all along the solar supply chain as solar continues to be an important source of electric power generation. A globally focused and protective solution is needed to reshore more of that supply chain at a time when solar is the fastest way to generate new electricity for the power grid.
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